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payment of support money, but for the performance or omission of such acts, as under the circumstances of the case are found necessary, may be enforced by contempt proceedings.

Valuable, however, as is the introduction of the juvenile court into our system of jurisprudence, — valuable both in its effect upon the child, the parents and the community at large, and in the great material saving to the state which the substitution of probation for imprisonment has brought about, nevertheless it is in no sense a cure-all. Failures will result from probation just as they have resulted from imprisonment. As Judge Lindsey has said (Juvenile-Court Laws, etc., p. 23):

It does not pretend to do all the work necessary to correct children or to prevent crime. It is offered as a far superior method to that of the old criminalcourt system of dealing with the thing rather than the child. That method was more or less brutal. The juvenile-court system has a danger in becoming one of leniency, but as between this method and that of the criminal court it is much to be preferred. But the dangers of leniency as well as those of brutality can be avoided in most cases. Juvenile-court workers must not be sentimentalists any more than brutalists. In short, the idea is a system of probation work which contemplates coöperation with the child, the home, the school, the neighborhood, the church, and the business man in its interests and that of the state. Its purpose is to help all it can and to hurt as little as it can; it seeks to build character, to make good citizens rather than useless criminals. The state is thus helping itself as well as the child, for the good of the child is the good of the state.

But more than this, the work of the juvenile court is, at the best, palliative, curative. We take these little human beings that are going the downward path and we try—and I think to some extent succeed

in saving them from going farther down. But that is not the most important task. The vital thing is to prevent them from reaching that condition in which they have to be dealt with in any court; and we are not doing our duty to the children of to-day, the men and women of to-morrow, when we neglect to destroy the evils that are leading them into careers of delinquency, when we fail not merely to uproot the wrong, but to implant in place of it the positive good.

It is well that we have these schools for the delinquent boy and girl; it is well that when they get into them they receive a thorough technical training, so that they are fitted for something afterwards. But it would be infinitely better if all children could receive that kind of an education before they reach the court; it would be infinitely better if we checked delinquency in its incipiency, and the incipiency generally is truancy.

To do this we must make the school interesting, more interesting than it is to-day; we must provide for those children who cannot sit at their desk all day long with only mental work; we must put manual training right through the entire school system, so that there will be an outlet for their nervous energies, so that they will have something to

work on with their hands instead of merely with the brain; and we must have the physician and the nurse in the school. We must not wait until the physical or mental troubles produce a state of delinquency and are discovered by the physician connected with the court.

And then, what is to be expected of the boys if they are not given a proper place to play? If they are going to be driven into the streets, naturally they will come into contact with the policeman, naturally there will be trouble, and the heroism and hero-worship that follows trouble with the public authorities. And when that sort of heroism begins, they have stepped onto the highroad to criminality. How shall they be halted? By giving the boys and girls proper playgrounds, not only in our cities. but in our towns and villages; by giving them the small parks with their swimming pools and their skating rinks and their assembly halls and their gymnasiums; by thus giving them a chance to convert the 'gang," which can't be eradicated, — it is not human to go alone, the crowd is the natural thing, - to convert the "gang" into a team pulling together for good instead of working together for evil. That is the result that has been obtained wherever these small parks have been established, especially in the congested districts of the cities. The boys get what they need. The appeal is made to their manhood and their honor. In every community there are needed separate ungraded rooms for the backward children, vacation and night schools, proper child-labor and compulsoryeducation laws, above all a living wage for the worker, and many more things I should like to touch upon in this connection, had I the time.

Just one more point. The number of girls that go wrong in a large city is enormous. The majority of them do not start in from love of lust, but from love of joy, the joy of life that is in every normal human being. Take the girl that is working all day long and then comes home to two or three rooms occupied by a large family in the slum districts that the city fails to keep clean; she does n't want to stay there every evening; she wants to go out; she wants that pleasure and happiness that our girls want, she likes the dance and the play just as much as do our girls. We let our girls enjoy themselves in a decent way under decent surroundings, but what do we do for these girls? The public dance hall offers them the joy and the lights and the pleasures; but if the good citizens of the town will offer them those joys, those decent, innocent pleasures, in a decent way and under proper influences, as do our settlements scattered throughout our large cities, and some of the churches, the girls will choose the latter nine times out of ten, aye ninety-nine times out of the hundred. But they must have some outlet for their energy, some satisfaction for this cry for joy and happiness, and if we do not give it to them, they will get it in another way.

In a number of communities juvenile protective leagues have been established to carry on this preventive work of seeing to it that conditions injurious to child life are remedied, that offenses against children are

punished, that the compulsory-education and child-labor laws, without which juvenile-court legislation is well-nigh worthless, are properly enforced; and to promote this constructive work of furnishing the largest opportunities for the full and complete development of a happy childhood.

I have touched upon some of the positive needs that mean so much in the growth of the child; through them may come the prevention of that delinquency for which the juvenile court offers merely a cure. And it is to a study of the underlying causes of juvenile delinquency, and to a realization of these preventive and positive measures, that we, the trained professional men, following the splendid lead of many of our European brethren, should give some thought and some care. The work demands the united and aroused efforts of the whole community, bent on keeping children from becoming criminals, determined that those who are treading the downward path shall be halted and led back.

To quote again from the debates on the Children's Bill in the House of Commons (Hansard, 4th ser., Vol. 186, p. 1262):

We want to say to the child that if the world or the world's law has not been his friend in the past, it shall be now. We say that it is the duty of this parliament, and that this parliament is determined, to lift, if possible, and rescue him, to shut the prison door and to open the door of hope.

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The parole law was the outgrowth of the progressive and reformative views of those who believed that severe and unusual punishment would not reform men and women. It was the natural result of the same spirit which abolished the stocks and whipping post.

In this state it was first applied to the Illinois State Reformatory at Pontiac, where the definite sentence was abolished and the indeterminate sentence was substituted.

In 1895, upon recommendation of Governor Altgeld, the principle was applied to the Joliet and Chester prisons, and all persons convicted of a felony, except those convicted of treason, murder, and rape, were merely sentenced to the penitentiary with the proviso that they should serve the minimum sentence provided by law, but should not serve longer than the maximum. As the law did not take effect until July, 1895, and as there were few courts held until later in the fall of the year, there were but few persons convicted whose minimum expired prior to July, 1897. Under the act of 1895 the penitentiary commissioners were required to administer the parole law, but the legislature of 1897 amended the law so that this work fell to the Board of Pardons.

1 Address before the Sangamon County Bar Association, 1906.
2 Member Illinois State Board of Pardons.

The old law was as vicious a piece of legislation as was ever enacted. It was vicious because its enforcement gave the most gross inequality in sentences. It was vicious because it made criminals instead of reforming men. It was vicious because it gave the habitual criminal a short sentence, while the first offender most frequently received a long sentence. Let me call attention to a few facts which are within the knowledge and observation of every member of the bar who has been practicing for a half dozen years. Since the present constitution was adopted and the office of state's attorney for each county has succeeded to the former provision of a state's attorney for each circuit, about 25 per cent of the state's attorneys have been young men,- bright, smart, intelligent, but yet without having had much previous experience. The reason for this is found in the small compensation, the older and more able attorneys not caring for the office in view of the great amount of work for the income.

In many cases the young official found himself matched against the ablest member of the bar. When this occurred it was in nearly every case where the offender was a man with a criminal record. The result would often be that the state's attorney would be only too willing to accept a plea of guilty and have the man receive a sentence of one or two years. The very next case might be one where some fellow, filled with cheap whisky, had committed some minor felony; he was poor and had no money to employ a lawyer, and the court in nearly every instance appoints some young and inexperienced member of the bar. The prior conviction, the plea of guilty and the short sentence, had caused indignation in the community, and this feeling permeates the courtroom. The second man goes to trial; the state's attorney is equal if not superior, in point of ability and experience, to the attorney for the defense. The evidence is heard, the jury retires, not only to consider their verdict, but with a determination to see that "the majesty of the law is vindicated," and they bring in a verdict giving the poor fellow a ten years' sentence.

When these men came to compare notes, the first would let it be known that he had committed numerous crimes and had before served in prison. The second man had never before transgressed the law, and the law itself did not recognize his crime to be as great as that of the other, and yet he had received five times the punishment. He became embittered against the law. During his long nights in his lonely. cell he again and again contrasted his lot with that of the other, and when he was released he went out determined to wreak vengeance against society for what he felt was his unjust if not inhuman punishment. He never permitted himself to go back to the circumstance of his conviction; he never reflected that the friends of the other man had come to his rescue and had secured for him the best legal talent, while the young man who had defended him was entirely without experience. He only knew and only thought of the small crime he had committed and his own

blameless past record, and its result of a long sentence as contrasted with the criminal career of the other one and his short sentence.

Another important factor always entered into the trial, if the state's attorney would not accept a plea of guilty, where the prominent criminal lawyer was employed. The attorney would never fail to have one or more friends on the jury, who would stand out for an acquittal or a short term, and a compromise verdict would result, and the compromise was always for a short sentence.

Let me illustrate another vicious feature of the old law. A number of years ago the farmers succeeded in having the law so amended that the minimum term for horse stealing was fixed at three years. In this county a man might steal the most disreputable old horse ever seen on the streets; he was indicted for horse stealing, and, if found guilty, would have to serve at least a three years' sentence. In one of the adjoining counties a man might steal the finest imported horse that ever left the shores of France; he could be indicted for larceny and receive a year's sentence.

The habitual-criminal act failed in very many instances to solve the problem for which it was enacted, while in many other cases it only worked as a means of oppression. A man might have served a number of terms in other states, or even in this state, and the state's attorney know nothing of it, and consequently no allegation could be made in the indictment. The strange and unexplained feature of the habitual-criminal act was that it applied only to burglary, grand larceny, horse stealing, robbery, forgery, and counterfeiting, leaving out the crimes of manslaughter, rape, and a number of other crimes which are as serious as those embraced in the act. If a man was sentenced from this county for any of the crimes embraced in the habitual-criminal act, and afterwards committed a like crime in the county, he could very easily be convicted as an habitual criminal; but if he had committed the first crime in some other county, the probability would be he would not be indicted under the habitual-criminal act; and if he had committed crimes and served terms in other states, he was quite certain not to be indicted under that act. When one man was indicted under the act and convicted, and another man, at the same term of court, who had served previous terms was not so indicted, you emphasized the inequality of sentences in a marked degree and turned the first man out of prison a confirmed criminal. I have said the habitual-criminal act was sometimes a cause of oppression. One of the strongest illustrations of the wrong which could be inflicted by the habitual-criminal act came under my notice in a case from St. Clair County. A young colored man who had just reached his majority was convicted of burglarizing a chicken house and taking therefrom a half dozen chickens. For this he received a year's sentence. He returned to his home at the expiration of his sentence, and for some six or seven years led an honest and upright life. One night he became hungry for chicken, and went out and again broke into a chicken house and stole three chickens. He was

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